I guess they started to call "portable" because the USB era allowed many programs and games to be just copied in it and then executed on a different machine without any installation procedure...

Well that still has nothing to do with portability.

That means the configuration of the compiled software is portable.

The only way for the software itself to be portable is if it is designed that way. No amount of flashing EXE files over USB makes any difference there; it just sounds like a dumb expression end users refer for their ability to not have to re-configure software which actually isn't portable either way.

Not sure why USB should have to do with it. I'm sure when floppy disk drives were still the major thing, the Windows registry didn't even exist back then! So why wasn't this artificial context of "portability" so correct back then as it is now?

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Originally Posted by Marcelo_20xx

As of know many apps developers refers to "portable" when such app doesn't require any installation (thus writes on the registry)...

I wouldn't say it's surprising that these developers would willingly use wrong terminology if it's in their better interest to capitalize in their position of power over the users.

It's easy for developers to claim their closed-source works as "portable" because they only release for a single operating system where the "registry" even exists as a thing at all.

By the definition of portability you cite, any software that is available on a non-Windows operating system is automatically considered portable, because there is no system registry. I however disagree with that too, because it's not hard to make Linux- or Macintosh- or etc.-only software that isn't portable to other systems, like Windows.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcelo_20xx

Emulation as I see it should be locally configured on a per game basis because there isn't any single config that will run optimally for everygame, I am happy that since PJ 2.X you can have it this way...

It's a good idea, but there are approaches at emulation that don't need any per-ROM configuration at all and maintain complete compatibility with everything. For things like speed hacks or stuff like mixed or hybrid HLE then it sounds like a good idea to have per-game config, but I think that's a matter of personal approach.

I only started to read "portable app" on the USB era, since some developers advertised their apps by the slogan: "Put it on a USB and carry it with you everywhere so as not to interrupt your work" or something among those lines, I personally despise the damn Windows registry for many reasons, I was happy with the ini files back then, I don't needed the convoluted thing that the registry has become now. Because I like to have control of what an app do to my system...

Quote:

It's a good idea, but there are approaches at emulation that don't need any per-ROM configuration at all and maintain complete compatibility with everything. For things like speed hacks or stuff like mixed or hybrid HLE then it sounds like a good idea to have per-game config, but I think that's a matter of personal approach.

Yes, its a very personal preference. Since I like to try various configurations, I don't want to screw up games that I already configured for the best experience possibly within my rig and it also ease the process of testing games too...

If I don't like the results of a configuration I just delete the test folder of the game I just created for that purpose and when I am happy with the results I rename the folder to the game's name and move it to another folder called "Final_dont_touch_ever_again " that I rarely ran configs tests again...